


where when you have to go

by concernedlily



Series: much good [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Domestic Bliss, First Time, Homecoming, Interior Decorating, M/M, Sentient Atlas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-08-24
Packaged: 2019-07-01 21:10:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15782190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily/pseuds/concernedlily
Summary: Keith has a room on the Atlas.





	where when you have to go

“I don’t know where to go,” Keith complains. He’s got one bandage left, and two days of normal readings on every test they give him. All the other paladins escaped the hospital days and days ago. 

The Garrison is more than full, though, just from taking in the most vulnerable of the refugees from the camps nearby and further afield: it had been battered by the Galra attack even before a robot lion fell on it from space, but it’s still in the best condition of any human facility on the whole planet and people are finding their way to it in ever-increasing streams. 

Krolia and Kolivan have taken over the little house in the desert. He could go there, but they’re making it the Blades’ centre of operations in the new Coalition capital Earth is struggling its way to becoming and more brand new recruits are arriving every day: they’re already allocating tents and bedrolls on a shift pattern. Keith still has a deep attachment to the Blades, but not enough to have to spoon Kolivan in a lumpy bed in order to convalesce under an actual roof.

Shiro is watching him, diverted from the tablet on his lap. He has so much work to do, all the time, but he likes to do it in Keith’s hospital room and Keith likes it best when he’s there, so that works out nicely for everyone. 

“The Atlas was built to house the lions,” Shiro says, as if he’s surprised to have to mention it. “You have a place there.”

There’s something about the way he says it that warms Keith inside. He knows pretty much anywhere would find some space for him, a Paladin of Voltron, if he needed it. The Garrison would make room, and that’s why he can’t ask it to. But Shiro makes it sound like on Atlas Keith simply has a room of his own, whether he wants it or not, whether he uses it or not. Like Shiro’s ship has a permanent spot especially for him. A home. 

“You could sleep in Black,” Shiro says. He goes back to his tablet, smiling. “But she’s in the hangar on Atlas already, so you might as well use your actual bed.”

There’s a rattle in the corridor: they’re bringing him another meal of weird stew. Keith hasn’t complained about it because he knows the injured are getting the best of the little they have, but he _will_ throw up in his mouth if he has to eat it any more. 

“Now?” Keith says hopefully and Shiro is leaning over to hit the button for the doctor before he’s even done. 

***

He’s out of bed and all the way to the doors to the hospital before his legs don’t want to support him any more. 

“Okay?” Shiro says. He slips his arm around Keith’s waist and Keith lets Shiro take his weight: they’re long past feeling like they have to be brave around one another. It’s a mercilessly sunny day, the air shimmering with dusty heat and feeling not at all fresh, but it’s the first breath in weeks that isn’t recycled around a battle-weary lion or tasting vaguely of hospital and he fills his lungs, enjoying it. He’s still carrying around having accepted sacrificing not only himself but his friends to get the robeast away from Earth; it feels good to still be in this mood of appreciating the little things. Now he’s back on his feet there’ll be enough crap coming along to make it fade fast, he’s pretty sure. 

Shiro slows to a stop just outside the doors. “Our ride’ll be along any minute,” he says.

“Okay,” Keith mumbles, too tired to ask questions. Shiro’s got it. He lists against Shiro some more and Shiro turns into him, wordlessly making it a hug. The new hand really is big, splayed cool in the middle of Keith’s back, Shiro’s flesh hand warm at his waist, and Keith doesn’t feel any shyness or shame at snuggling in. Being like this on Garrison grounds has an outlaw familiarity to it: Shiro was never afraid to openly show Keith affection, even when they were student and mentor, Keith never shy of flaunting being the Garrison’s star pilot’s favourite, and they’re so far beyond that now. This thing between them feels slow and new but not fragile, like the steady inevitability of stars pulling together, planets finding an orbit, galaxies forming. 

There’s a pop of ozone and Keith smiles into Shiro’s neck, lets Shiro help him stay steady as he goes to his knees and wraps his arms around Kosmo, accepts his stinky whuffles and licks. He’d raised Kosmo from a lost baby but he’s pretty sure the wolf thinks of Keith and his friends as the idiot puppies at this point. “You got him better trained than I do.”

“More he’s got me wrapped around his paw, your mom thinks,” Shiro says fondly. “I’m convinced he’s got about ten different people feeding him.”

He puts one hand on Kosmo, the other on Keith’s shoulder, his fingers gripping reassuringly. Keith closes his eyes at the split second chill of the place between places as Kosmo carries them away. 

***

“This is all for me?” Keith says. It’s not _a room_ , it’s a whole suite of them, separate bedroom and living area and a study, a kitchenette and bathroom of his own. There’s a passage with a zipline down to Black’s hangar, just like they had from the bridge in the Castle. After the bedroom he had there it feels luxurious, everything brand new and clean and perfect. A line of bright blue light runs along the wall and pulses a couple of times; it feels cautious and friendly, like it’s saying hello, and Keith taps tentatively on the wall to say hi back. 

“Sam designed this huge lab into the ones connected to Green’s hangar,” Shiro says. “Then I think he realised he’d have to give everyone the same.”

“Wow,” Keith says. He is impressed, touched, even. The rooms are completely bare, though, and Kosmo nudges in close to him, examining the bed with a disdainful air: the mattress is brand new, still wrapped up, a pillow and sheets in Garrison orange stacked neatly on one end. If it was ready to slide right in Keith might have gone straight back to bed, but he’s not sure he has the energy to make the bed right now. “I guess I need to get some stuff to fill it, then.”

“Oh, yeah,” Shiro says, looking abashed. “Your things are at mine, I should’ve brought them over, sorry. We can get them now.”

Keith looks around for Kosmo to flash them there, but he’s already at the door and waiting next to Shiro, who puts his hand out to Keith and smiles, so Keith guesses they’re walking. Holding hands with Shiro turns out to be a less good way of not falling over than having Shiro’s arm around him, but it still feels good; Keith likes how casual it is, Shiro just reaching for him like of course they should be touching wherever they go, Shiro’s thumb rubbing gently over Keith’s knuckles.

It turns out not to be far at all. The door out from Keith’s living area opens into a big room not unlike the lounge area the Castle had had, a sunken area in the middle surrounded by cushioned seats. Unlike the Castle, there’s already a big screen TV and a games console plugged into it, Lance’s blue lion slippers half under the sofa, a basket of weird alien produce with a gift ribbon on the handle on the floor waiting for Hunk to make it delicious, Allura’s mice sleeping in a little pile on a side table. 

There’s five doors radiating out like sunrays, each bearing a stylised coloured lion, and another on the opposite side. 

Shiro leads him to that one, and straight across the corridor outside to a door that opens for Kosmo, who goes inside and climbs right into the dog bed next to the sofa, burrowing into a blanket that looks suspiciously like the hospital-issue one that’d gone missing the second time Keith had woken up. 

That’s not the only homely touch. Shiro has the shuttle models and cadet trophies Keith recognises from the apartment he’d shared with Adam before the Kerberos mission. There are framed prints on the walls of artists Keith had learned about years ago because Shiro loved them and has forgotten now apart from the names Rothko, Pollock, Mondrian. It smells of well-used coffee pot and cafeteria mac and cheese. It just looks and feels lived in, comfortably so, papers and schematics on the floor, a Garrison jacket over a chair, some kind of timeline stuck to the wall on handwritten pink post-its. It feels like _Shiro_ : not the tightly-wound one from the Castle but the Shiro Keith had known before, who’d believed he could make his dreams come true through sheer force of will. 

“You’re close to us,” he says, pleased. 

Shiro laughs. “Yeah, sorry. You guys had more privacy originally but when we came out of the first transformation she’d done some renovations on the ship form. The engineers are still trying to map out all the new configurations.”

“It’s good,” Keith says firmly. As far as he’s concerned, the closer the better: Shiro gets in trouble when Keith doesn’t have eyes on him. Kosmo lets out a low bark and Keith takes the point, goes to the sofa and curls into the corner, watching Shiro move around in his own kitchenette with the confidence of someone totally content in their space. “How is she?”

Shiro purses his lips, thinking, and Keith lets himself look, lets himself enjoy Shiro’s handsome, beloved face. 

They have _nothing to do_.

Apart from fix up Earth, turn it into a galaxy-wide refuge and base for the Coalition, and prepare for the next iteration of the robeast they’d fought. 

But unlike pretty much everything since they’d first stepped onto the blue lion, none of that has to happen _right now_. They can wait, recover, plan. They can take some time for themselves. 

Keith’s going to take advantage of that. Once he’s feeling a little better. 

“She’s… good,” Shiro says. He comes over to offer Keith a cheese sandwich on bread so white, doughy and plasticky it makes Keith want to sob with happy recognition, an elderly-looking can of Coke, and two fat white painkillers. “You know when you’re flying Voltron and you discover something new?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. It’s a rush, but it’s exhausting too; usually his lion is just vaguely there in the back of his head, like Black is now, dormant but comfortingly present; but during battle and especially when they start talking to their paladins about something new they have to give it’s like he can feel his brain setting on fire, like her freaky quintessence senses are his and the whole universe is contained in his skin, _alive_. 

“Well, she’s like that all the time,” Shiro says. Suddenly Keith can see it, or Shiro lets it show, resting his head against the back of the sofa, happy but exhausted lines at the corners of his mouth.

“Fuck,” he says. It’s the only thing that seems to encompass that, the understanding only the paladins can share with Shiro of what that’s like, the terror and excitement and pride of it, the intimacy of that bond. 

“Yeah,” Shiro says. “It’s fine. She’s just new. She wants to help.”

“I’m glad she is,” Keith says. “She saved our lives. _You_ saved our lives, figuring out what she could do.”

It feels good, telling Shiro. They haven’t really had the chance yet to look back on everything that had happened, and doing it here, alone in Shiro’s quarters, feels right. There’s so much of what’s happened to them he thinks will be falling out of everyone for months, like watching an eclipse in the shifting reflections of a bucket of water, unable to look directly. 

“I missed it,” Shiro whispers, confessing back. “I missed Black,” and Keith closes his eyes.

“I’m sorry you lost her,” he says. Shiro finds Keith’s hand with his, tangles their fingers so gently, and Keith lets go of the guilt he’s been carrying, that saving Shiro’s life stripped him of the bond he’d fought so hard for.

“I’m glad she’s with you,” he says and Keith slips his arm over Shiro’s shoulder and pulls him in, props his chin on Shiro’s head and feels him breathe, then crams half his sandwich into Shiro's mouth, making him laugh and spray crumbs.

Shiro’s pants chime discreetly and he heaves a sigh, warm and damp against Keith’s throat, and sits up. “I have a six o’clock,” he says, looking disgruntled. “I forgot.”

“That’s okay,” Keith says. He glances around and Kosmo looks up. “Did you say some stuff of mine is here?”

“In the bedroom,” Shiro says, waving at one of the doors off the living room and frowning over some message on his tablet, and Keith takes his Coke with him to check it out, Kosmo padding along next to him.

Keith’s stuff is there. His old red jacket hangs on the back of a small armchair, his cadet clothing and old Blades suit folded neatly on the seat. He doesn’t _have_ that much more than that, but there’s a smattering of other things Krolia must have given him from the house. His old books are lined up in Shiro’s bookcase, all mixed in together with Shiro’s own collection, fiction and non-fiction split out from one another and then alphabetised. Keith had had two pictures of his dad and one of them is here, set carefully on top of the bookcase, the frame and glass polished clean and free of fingerprints, which it’d never been in Keith’s house. There’s a familiar pair of sheets taped to the wall; the graph Hunk had made of the Fraunhofer line, Keith’s photograph next to it of the Blue Lion’s mountain range. 

It’s not like it’s all boxed up, ready for him to take away. It’s almost like it would be if Keith lived here, if these were his and Shiro’s rooms, not just Shiro’s. Shiro wasn’t just keeping Keith’s stuff stored for whenever Keith could pick them up; he’d kept Keith’s things all around him.

Shiro’s bed isn’t a bare mattress with the bedding on the end. It’s neatly made, the soft white sheets turned down invitingly, way nicer than standard Garrison issue. It looks warm and comfortable, and under the circumstances Keith feels within his rights to climb in and stretch out. Kosmo jumps up with him, turns a couple of times and settles down next to him.

The pillows smell like Altean decontamination wash and hair gel. It’s quiet, much quieter than the hospital, with just a gentle humming sound Keith recognises: Atlas resonates on the same note as the black lion. He’s sleepy and safe and he lets himself sink heavy into the bed, welcome rest so close he can touch it.

“Hey,” Shiro says softly, and he manages to crack one eye open.

“Is this okay?” he says.

Shiro is standing in the doorway and the way he’s looking at Keith could almost wake him right back up again, so incredibly tender it makes Keith’s whole body just melt.

“Well, Kosmo knows he’s not supposed to be on the bed,” Shiro says. He’s smiling and Keith smiles too, presses back deeper into the sheets. Shiro comes in and puts an earpiece on the night table, black and white and orange, and says, “Let me know if you need anything, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

“I’m gonna kiss you when you get back,” Keith says drowsily. “Just so you know.”

Shiro lets out a hard breath above him and Keith buries his face in the pillow. He doesn’t want to talk about this, just wants it to be as easy as it’s been since Shiro walked into his hospital room for the first time since Keith woke up and just flopped straight down into his lap, like they already were what Keith had been hoping since the moment he’d put his hand on Shiro’s shoulder in a red desert sunrise they might become.

“Here’s one to keep warm,” Shiro says and Keith makes a little muffled happy noise as Shiro kisses him, about half on his lips and half on the corner of his mouth, lingering and sweet. “Sleep well, Keith.”

***

They’re on the Galra ship, separated, Earth defenceless below them. They call for their lions.

They come. Except Black. Keith is abandoned, alone, can’t defend his friends -

He sits up, sweating and clammy, panting, reaches out for Black desperately in the dark -

She’s there, and the feeling he gets in response is politely supportive, but that she doesn’t really get why he’s bothering her.

“Keith?” Shiro says, sounding fuzzy, and Keith realises he’s in Shiro’s bed, the stillness around them that of deep night: he’s slept through until really late.

Now Shiro is in bed with him, perfectly okay. Black is okay. Everyone’s okay, Earth is okay.

The ceiling diffuses into golden light, enough to see Shiro sitting up next to him, his arm starting to glow blue, and Keith groans and collapses back down.

“Sorry I woke you up,” he mumbles.

Shiro puts his arm around him and pulls Keith to his chest. “How about we just agree right now that waking each other up with nightmares is nothing to apologise for? I think it might save us a lot of time,” he says wryly and Keith leans gratefully into Shiro’s lips on his forehead, takes the offered comfort. He’s _not_ alone. He tries to tell his body that, taking deep breaths, his heart crashing a little less hard in his chest with every beat.

What Shiro just said is objectively pretty depressing - both of them do have nightmares, bad ones, and have for ages - but Keith likes it, likes Shiro’s easy assumption that there’s going to be a lot more nights like this, sharing a bed just normal. Keith’s never slept alongside anyone with any regularity (Kosmo notwithstanding, but Shiro seems to be true to his word about dogs on the bed and he can just see the pale lines of Kosmo’s fur through the ajar door to the living room) but he and Shiro being together like this feels right.

Better than right. Shiro is bare-chested and enticingly sleep-warm under Keith’s hands and cheek, and Keith is suddenly very aware they’re in bed together, private and quiet and close, in the middle of the night with hours and hours until anything is expected of them.

He tilts his head against Shiro enough for the brush of Keith’s mouth on his firm pec to feel like a kiss, lets his hand go flat against Shiro’s stomach, feeling the smoothness of scars under his palm and fingers, and says, “Hey. Didn’t I promise you something when you got back?”

“You did,” Shiro says. He sounds amused, and his soft fingers in Keith’s hair are saying there’s no pressure: Keith can be too tired, too freaked out, not be ready tonight or ever and Shiro will still be his friend. 

Keith knows their friendship, treasures it more than anything. He wants more.

He’s devoted a lot of thinking time to their first kiss. He’s not going to say it was wasted effort - almost all of it he really, really enjoyed at the time - but it turns out he was nowhere even close to what happens, even further from how it feels.

He’s still wearing the scrub top they’d sent him out of the hospital in. Shiro skims over the skin at his hip, pushing it up just a little, and Keith sits up to pull it over his head, dropping it on the floor.

“Ignore it,” he says firmly when Shiro flinches with military fastidiousness, “we’ll get it in the morning,” and he runs his hand straight up Shiro’s chest, up his throat and his light, fast pulse; sinks his fingers into Shiro’s hair and cups the back of his head, pulling Shiro down over him as he lays back.

Shiro falls into the cradle of Keith’s hips like he was made to be there. The air feels thick with the anticipation of a wakeful night and long-tempered lust. Shiro is sweating, Keith’s fingers sliding damp over the shifting planes of his back as he lowers himself. His weight presses Keith into the bed, all heavy muscle and _whoah finally happening_. 

Shiro presses his forehead to Keith’s and Keith feels his vision sharpening, figures he must be going a little bit Galra to see Shiro better in the dim light, but if Shiro notices he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t hesitate at all. He just nudges Keith’s smile with his, Keith’s suddenly-improved vision showing him that Shiro’s whole face is suffused with a quiet happiness that shows in his relaxed body as Keith hooks a leg around his powerful thighs, and then they’re kissing. 

Shiro’s lips are dry and his mouth is yielding and his tongue is soft. He’s an inquisitive kisser, more playful than Keith had expected, thought about. Kissing, Shiro doesn’t feel like the Garrison’s golden boy, Zarkon’s experiment, the universe’s hero; just any young man in love, eager and hungry and horny, his cock already getting hard against Keith’s in the fluffy pajama pants Keith catches an accidental handful of when he’s wrapping his arm around Shiro’s waist at just the moment Shiro bites gently at his lower lip and then licks at it and back into Keith’s mouth.

He kisses like he’d be happy doing just that for ages and some of that lack of urgency translates itself to Keith. His mind stops racing with all the things he wants to do, wants to feel, all the things he wants to experience of this side of Shiro he’s wanted but never had. He lets himself sink into the pleasure of just being here with him, Shiro’s mouth sweet and glad on his, kisses that chain together into endlessness. His hands want to learn Shiro’s body and Keith lets them, running his palms all over Shiro’s back and sides, and Shiro lets him too, even when Keith finds the grafts where they’d attached the new socket to his shoulder. 

Shiro’s prosthetic fingers twitch, pulling Keith’s hair a little, and Keith squirms. He lets his fingers stay on Shiro’s shoulder, delicately exploring the join there, watching Shiro’s face. He’d wondered, sometimes, about what would change, if they got together; he’d thought, how much more intimate could they be, how much more could Keith love him: it hadn’t seemed possible there could be anything beyond what he already felt. 

Now he knows. It’s not more, but it’s different, being able to touch Shiro in this way that makes Shiro shiver, his eyes closing and his body following Keith’s instinctively. It feels like more of a responsibility than Voltron and defending their home or even the entire universe: Shiro trusts him.

“Does it hurt?” he says quietly.

“Mm,” Shiro says. He opens his eyes, and the gaze he lays on Keith is hot and shining; Keith has to slide his hand up, cup his cheek, and Shiro leans into him, turns to kiss Keith’s palm. “No, it’s… good. The Galra arm hurt every day. I didn’t even realise until it was gone.”

Their gazes meet then, Shiro’s gentle and loving and full, and if Keith had ever had any doubt about whether Shiro remembered the fight on the clone facility, this answers it. Shiro remembers everything, doesn’t blame Keith for anything, and he takes a deep breath and lets go of everything that had happened there.

“Shiro,” he whispers. He leans hard into his knee on the soft mattress and flips them, Shiro pliant against him.

Shiro stares up at him, calm and smiling, and says, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Keith says. He leans down and Shiro meets him in a driving open-mouthed kiss that has him shaking under Shiro’s hands. His cock is hard, aching in the scrubs pants he’s still wearing, and he can feel Shiro just the same against him. Keith wants him desperately, so much he feels dizzy with it, Shiro’s mouth against his the only anchor he needs. 

Shiro rolls them onto their sides and pulls Keith’s thigh over his hip with a big confident hand, his pajamas and Keith’s scrub pants catching and pulling down, the soft head of Keith’s cock rubbing against Shiro’s firm stomach and making him gasp as Shiro coaxes him into greedy deep kisses. Keith clutches at him and lets Shiro take charge, lets Shiro make him feel good.

“Yeah? Okay?” Shiro says, leaves bitey little kisses on the pointiness of his chin and along his jaw and down his throat, licking at the hollow between the knobs of his collarbones, weird and endearing: his _collarbones_ , possibly the part of Keith’s body he’s thought the absolute least about in his whole life.

Keith feels seen, needed like air, and he laughs, adored and adoring, and says, “Anything is okay.”

Shiro makes an unsteady noise against the pearling sweat over Keith’s heart and takes both their cocks in hand together, and that’s Keith pretty much _done_ , fuck, quicker than he’d meant and slower than he’d expected. Shiro wants him, Shiro _loves_ him, and he seizes Shiro and kisses him hard, trying to say everything he can usually only find words for when Shiro’s trying yet again to die in his arms, climax sending him flying, violet-lit starfields behind his eyes.

Shiro strokes him through, follows him over the edge after as if he’d been waiting for Keith to fall first. He cleans them up after it, not very well, and Keith is still catching his breath when Shiro kisses his eyes open.

“Hey,” he says blurrily but it seems like Shiro just wants to look at him, their hands loosely clasped against Shiro’s chest. Keith had always figured sticking around to gaze into each other’s eyes for ages after would feel boring at best and awkward at worst, but with Shiro it feels so right it’s like time isn’t even happening. There’s nothing in his mind but the dry rub of Shiro’s thumb over the back of his hand, Shiro’s tongue wetting his kiss-red lips, the fading twitch of Shiro’s expressive eyebrows as he gets tired.

“Shiro?” he whispers, when he’s nearly away himself, near enough sleep to take a chance on dreams.

“Yeah?” Shiro says, nuzzles in a bit closer and Keith sighs, peaceful.

“I’m gonna tell the others they can use my room,” he says. “Like a guest room for their families or something. Or Coran can have it. Romelle. I don’t know.”

Shiro seems to wake up a little. “Keith,” he says, “... you’re sure?”

“Yeah,” Keith says. “If that’s okay?”

“Very okay,” Shiro murmurs. He tilts Keith’s face up, his gaze searching; kisses Keith, touches him. Keith touches back, and they don’t actually get to sleep for another little while.

***

He wakes again in the early hours of the morning. The ship is _shaking_ , and he reaches for Shiro physically and the black lion mentally in the same moment, half-awake, ready to fight.

Black is a bit impatient this time: he gets just that she doesn’t think anything is wrong. 

“Shiro,” he says, opening his eyes.

The room is blazing around them, quintessence-sparkling, and so is Shiro, his eyes wide with white fire.

It’s only a second. He’s back to normal by the time Keith is touching him, blinking grey eyes a second later, saying, “Keith?” and opening his arms for Keith to scramble into them. It stamps itself in his memory: the first time he’s been able to give in to instinct and actually do what he’s always wanted to when Shiro is in danger, press in for a frantic kiss, feeling under his own hands that Shiro is okay.

“What _was_ that?” he says. “Shiro -”

“It was Atlas,” Shiro says. “It’s okay, it’s okay. It was Atlas.”

“Doing _what_?” Keith says, not sure whether he’s more pissed about Atlas making Shiro look like that or waking them up to do it in the middle of the night. Shiro doesn’t seem hurt or upset. For all Keith knows, that’s what he does when he connects with Black: he’s never seen himself.

“Um,” Shiro says, looking uncertain. He gets out of bed and Keith follows him as he trails around the room and then out, his fingers twitching on Keith’s hip. Kosmo cracks one eye and gives them an unimpressed look, which does more than anything to reassure Keith things are okay. He thinks they should be safe in Atlas, but he really hopes if something terrible happens they at least have time to put underwear on.

There’s a new door in the living room and Keith looks at it dubiously. “More damn remodelling? And that’s for…?”

“You,” Shiro says slowly, surprised and pleased. “Straight down to Black.”

“Huh,” Keith says, looking at it. Shiro doesn’t have any relatives left on Earth, but at least Shiro's massive robot spaceship is happy to welcome Keith to the family.

Shiro is looking at him, and when Keith touches the softness of his smile it just gets bigger. “You want to go back to bed?” Shiro says.

“Yes I do,” Keith says, and takes his hand.


End file.
